Ubiquity and Fluidity of Art, Science, Performance and Technology

80 Pages·2014·0.48 MB·English

Ubiquity and Fluidity of Art, Science,
Performance and Technology

25 years of critical and creative
curatorial practice 1979-2004

Supporting Documentation submitted for the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy

by

Rob La Frenais
School of Arts, Brunel University

September 2005
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Abstract

In this practice-based supporting documentation, I utilise what I nominate as twin axes, or vectors,
fluidity and ubiquity, to describe the art practice I have engaged with over 25 years. Ubiquity to describe
the way that art spreads into the areas of science, technology and real-life situations including political
issues; fluidity to describe the artist’s ability to adapt quickly to circumstances. To do this I use various
case studies emerging from my professional trajectory - firstly as founder and editor of Performance
Magazine from 1979 and secondly as a creative curator working internationally since 1987.

In the introduction I list the activities I have undertaken that inform this research, which, along with the
list of materials, illustrates my practice-based research.

I have selected the projects here because of their resonance and ability to reflect the above axes and
these are presented as active field notes emerging from critical and curatorial practice. I also reflect on
the artist's critical engagement with science and technology and the artist's ability to manipulate
contestable data, both from a subjective and objective point of view. I also provide an historical snapshot
of artistic activity which is widely drawn, yet maps various strata of artistic practices that might
accompany an archive of an era. In doing this I describe unusual environments such as microgravity and
other areas where the artist’s frontiers are expanded in a fluid and ubiquitous manner, and list some
strategies for artistic survival.
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Contents

1) Introduction
2) Interrogating Reality
3) Subversive Transmissions
4) Altering the Site
5) Shifting Territories
6) The Pit and the Pendulum
7) Subjective Reality, Science and Art
8) State of the Human
9) Big Science Questioned
10) Introduction to Vertigo
11) Hidden Paths and Way Stations
12) Conclusion- Archiving the Impossible
List of References

List of materials submitted
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1) Introduction

There have been many ways to describe artists' movement across disciplines in the last century and the
beginning of this one. In this supporting documentation of my practice-based work I am using two
vectors, ubiquity, in the sense of the tendency to spread out across various frontiers, to be everywhere at
once; and fluidity, in the sense of rapid and almost seamless flow across disciplinary localities. The
source material contains non-sequential selected case studies from a period of 25 years of work and
some texts authored by myself. In this way, I aim to map the various strata of art practice that I have
either originally initiated or taken a significant part in. In doing this, I will argue that a coherent, relevant
practice can be constructed across various axes of different fields – principally art, science, and
technology – using various media ranging from publishing to performance and moving and static visual
representation and extending outside the art sphere into both 'real' life and scientific endeavour.

What is the breadth of this relevant practice? In 1979, motivated by a perceived gap in publications
reflecting the movement across disciplines between visual performance art, installation, experimental
theatre, music, film and video emerging in Britain and Europe, I founded and started to edit the journal
Performance Magazine. It soon also became a significant cultural journal 'interrogating reality' as
illustrated here in the chapter of the same name. Guest editors included Lynne McRitchie, Tracey Warr,
Claire McDonald and Steve Rogers who took over the editorship in 1987 until his untimely and tragic
death as a result of AIDS in 1989. The editorship was then taken over by Gray Watson until 1992, when
the magazine decided to make way for new blood in the form of Hybrid Magazine.

In 1987, I visited Documenta and various other European exhibitions and festivals to produce a special
issue for Performance Magazine on Europe and became a freelance curator, producing the exhibition on
art and the media 'Confrontations' for the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle Upon Tyne as well as a series
of performances and installations for the AIR Gallery in London. I then founded and became the director
of the Edge Biennale Trust which presented the major performance and installation festivals Edge 88 in
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London, Edge 90 in Newcastle Upon Tyne and Edge 92 in London and Madrid, as part of the European
Capital of Culture. Tracey Warr joined me as co-director for Edge 92. Jon Bewley co-curated part of
Edge 88 and Edge 90 as a member of Projects UK and was for a period of time co-director of Edge 92.
During this period over 50 newly-commissioned major works by artists were presented in a site-specific
context.

In 1992, with the Edge Biennale concluded, I became a freelance curator working with Tracey Warr on
projects such as Earthwire (1994) and James Turrells' Northern Skyspace (later to become the Kielder
Skyspace). In 1995 I became the artistic director of the Belluard-Bollwerk International Festival in
Fribourg, Switzerland and produced a significant event and conference about art and consciousness
entitled 'The Incident' (See chapter 7 on Art, Science and subjective Reality). This was later repeated at
London's ICA as a major season.

In 1999 I joined Nicola Triscott, founder and director of the Arts Catalyst, the science-art agency, as
curator and remain there today. At the same time I became a part-time Phd student at Brunel University
and started my practice-based research which informed my work with the Arts Catalyst on the following
projects: Eye of the Storm (2000, Royal Institution), a conference on science and controversy, Atomic
(2001, Imperial College) an exhibition about nuclear power and idealism, Clean Rooms (2003-2004,
Gallery Oldham, Natural History Museum) an exhibition about artists engaging with biotech industries,
Working With Wetware (2004, Darwin Centre, Natural History Museum), a symposium on the ethics of
artists working with genetics and a series of parabolic flight campaigns in Russia and France leading to
the exhibition MIR - documentation of microgravity interdisciplinary research (2004/2005, Cornerhouse,
Manchester, Stills, Edinburgh). In 2005 I curated the first ‘Artist’s Airshow’, about artists engaging with
concepts of flight at the former Royal Aeronautical Engineering Workshops at Farnborough. Finally in
2005 I worked with Nicola Triscott on developing a cultural policy for the International Space Station
under a contract awarded to the Arts Catalyst by the European Space Agency (to be published).
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How have the case studies been selected? Firstly, where I have the opinion that they represent a
significant creative advance in their field. This is a qualitative judgement, which I sum up in both their
factual and intuitive aspects. Secondly, where I feel a significant historical position has been established.
This has been done from the point of view of the critic/curator (I am both) as accidental person in history.
This refers not only to the Artist Placement Group's definition of the artists as 'incidental person' in the
sixties (Latham/Steveni, 1966) but also to the literary and popular cultural notion of the 'eminence grise'
(the spy, clothed in grey, who appeared unexpectedly in various parts of Europe, reporting the political
mood of the populace to Cardinal Richeleu). (i) In other words, being in a certain place at a certain
significant time, writing about and curating projects that admittedly show only part of the picture, but
which are linked to other kinds of movements in art.

I use this concept then to chart a personal history which is intertwined with other personal histories, and
serves as a structural device rather than a biography or an attempt to provide a whole art historical
picture. I was there, I saw this, I did that. I hope this is interesting to you. To try and sum up the various
webs of activity, to draw together all the threads – as Steven Wilson attempted in his vast-ranging tome
'Information Arts' (Wilson, 2002) – would be to attempt the impossible.

Instead, this set of descriptions could be compared to an anthropologist's field notes. In fact, an active
description of a contemporary creative curator's work has rarely been attempted in the history of recent
research. Normally, this would be done from the point of view of an art historian, or the artist him/herself.
So, while not a complete study of the field in which I have worked, this represents a partially subjective
view, interspersed with other, pertinent viewpoints. Another analogy is that of a geological survey of a
timeline of activity, with various layers being exposed at different times.

Each set of case studies represents a vector, chosen by the above methodologies that brings together
various correspondences I consider to be co-related over a 25-year period. So for example, Brion
Gysin's dream machine experiments with Ian Somerfield (La Frenais, 1981: 13-16), are followed by
Giullermo Gomez Pena's illegal radio transmissions in Newcastle (Bennett, 1990: 228) and lead to
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Simon Faithfull's transmitted live TV glimpses of the edge of space from a weather balloon launched by
the audience (Arts Catalyst, Artist’s Airshow, web ref.) Ulrike Rosenbach's site-specific performances at
the 1987 Documenta takes us though Black Market's performance for 5 random Glasgow taxicabs
(Bennett, 1990: 225), to Neal White's penetration of a Class 3 Clean Room environment at a Marseille
space laboratory (Clean Rooms Catalogue 2002, 7-12).

In this thesis, I aim to convey a series of moving foci which cross disciplines, bringing in new concepts
such as 'performative science', the artist as remote sensing device, the artist as nuclear sculptor, the
artist as cosmonaut. I also show that the job description of the critic and the curator are both subject to
change. What happens to the critic when he or she must undergo a three-week bike ride to review a
performance? What happens to the curator when he must work undercover with hunt saboteurs to
prevent the artist being arrested and deported, float in midair on a diving aircraft, or is simply reduced to
the one who comes and empties the toilets in a three-month remote habitation experiment? (Chapters
3.4.10).

Finally, it is necessary to point out that these case studies have a simple theoretical framework, which I
eventually decided would be the most appropriate to capture the commonality of the work: the use of the
vectors of ubiquity and fluidity. In some cases they touch on ground covered by other writers about the
'object of performance', the limits of the artists' body, the breakdown of the gap between the perceiver
and the perceived, placelessness, the territory of the liminal. Furthermore, I have deliberately preferred
not to filter these case studies through relevant models of cultural theory such as those formulated by,
for example, Deleuze. While I acknowledge that in some circumstances these can be a useful tool – a
sharp instrument for closer analysis – I see myself as a 'field curator' noting down evidence for further
examination, which I hope will move the reader towards useful eventual conclusions about the wider
movements between and beyond disciplines. To my knowledge, this supporting documentation is the
first instance of an active record of curating in the form of research.
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What follows in the various chapters are descriptions of artworks and projects I have been directly
involved in producing. It is an attempt to structure a complex story of curating and criticism and to draw
some common threads together. Some of the work described was undertaken during my period of
research and has been joined with this 25-year body of work to be considered ltogether as a practice-
based thesis. In other words, I hope to present the projects as, in a sense, being authored by me, in that
I have organised and been intimately involved in them – although as a curator I am reliant of course on
the artists to come up with the creative ideas and push them through. In addition to this documentation,
catalogues and a video have been provided as examples of work undertaken during, or recent to, this
period of research. As documentation, this should be taken as contributing to the total picture of my
research and informing its conclusions.

A technical note about the writing of some of these chapters. They are a mixture of text written
contemporaneously and re-writing of texts written in the past 25 years for various purposes. The earlier
texts form the minority of the thesis, but I have deliberately inserted them, indented, within the chapters.
This is to provide an accurate record of my work as well as retain the freshness of the original. I have
however partially reworked them and in some cases altered them to remove any historical
inconsistencies. References are given in case the reader wants to consult the original.

i) François Leclerc du Tremblay (better known as "Père Joseph" or "Father Joseph"), a Capuchin monk, who would later
become a close confidant (of Cardinal Richelieu) Because of his closeness to Richelieu (éminence), and the grey colour of his
robes, Father Joseph was also nicknamed l'Éminence grise ("the Grey Eminence"). Later, Richelieu often used Father Joseph
as an agent during diplomatic negotiations.
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2) Interrogating Reality

When I founded Performance Magazine in 1979, it was clear there was a gap in the documentation of
new forms of art that veered away from the object and away from theatre. Yet Performance Magazine,
though regularly featuring profiles of 'classical' performance art figures – for example the British
performance art duo The Kipper Kids appeared in its first issue (La Frenais, 1979:3-6) before going on to
feature interviews with artists such as John Cage and Joseph Beuys – was also inspired by the Nicolas
Roeg/Donald Cammell movie by the same name, Performance (Dir. Roeg/Cammell 1970) and continued
to reflect themes from that movie through its 13 year life. That film, in its interaction and reality exchange
between the rock star fop, Jagger and the gangster Turner, based on the Borges theme of the
doppelganger from the story 'Tlon Iqbar, Orbis Tertius' (Borges, 1962: 27-43), set a theme of
interrogating reality that was soon to become the magazine's hallmark.

The gauntlet was thrown down early by the director of the theatre group The Phantom Captain (1970),
Neil Hornick, in his cover interview with the iconic comedian Charlie Drake. (Hornick, 1981:13-16) It
continued with a 'refocussing' of West End theatre, reaching its ultimate provocation in an interview with
Fiona Richmond who was at that time appearing in the bedroom farce of the period: 'Wot, No Pyjamas?'
(Hornick, 1981:19-22).

In 'State Performance', the 'fairytale' Royal Wedding for Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer was
given the full Performance treatment with articles by Lynn McRitchie comparing the wedding to that of
the Yorkshire Ripper, by myself on the performative power of heraldry, and with a specially
commissioned performance for the cover by performance duo Marty St James and Anne Wilson, who
conducted a mock wedding on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral. (McRitchie, 1981 6-9) Of course life
always outperforms art, so had we known when planning our special issue that the Prince and his long-
time mistress had been part of a larger, cynical plot to find a nineteen year old virgin commoner to renew
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a flagging inbred monarchy (and then, according to popular myth, to assassinate), we might have
revised our analysis more along the lines of conspiracy theory.

Long before Tracey Emin started her artistic practice, we were re-interpreting bedding as art, and when
the late Steve Rogers joined the team, there would always be a feature on events such as Crufts Dog
show, the Ideal Home exhibition and the Earls Court Boat Show. (Rogers, 1984:12-13, Blazwick, Rodley,
1984:8-10, Stalin, 1984:14-16) There would sometimes be a more serious thematic to this, and the idea
of performance as a fluid gesture started to emerge as we engaged more and more in performance as
process, proceeding to land art and journeys by horse and cart. A special issue on performance journeys
for example, was inspired by a project by artist Johannes Cornellison in which he circumnagivated the
world, documenting points at which the equator was marked. 'Art on the Run' was another issue where
to review a single performance by Bath's Natural Theatre company over a period of three weeks during
the Lands End to John O' Groats bike ride, I, as editor, rode a bicycle all the way, taking notes (La
Frenais, 1982: pp 14-20).

Natural Theatre, still in operation today, are an interesting case in point given the historically cyclical
waves of interest in art that interrogates reality. What Natural Theatre did was try to be ordinary people.
Although they would occasionally use absurdist devices to frame their real-life activities, such as
portraying a group of VIPs arriving with slightly mannered activities, their methodology was one of the
hoax, which used elements of what they would find. So for example, as most of their captive audience
consisted of cyclists – in the early eighties a somewhat endangered and in some cases, militant minority
– a typical tactic was to mount a demonstration of angry motorists demanding more rights for Vauxhall
drivers. Or on a particularly demanding hill, an emergency medical station with Crimean-war style
nurses. For days they might not appear, then the audience would be treated to a site-specific
performance of 'The Sound of Music' on some picturesque hill. Natural Theatre are located in the long
tradition therefore of the hoax, starting with the inspection of a naval dockyard at the turn of the century
by Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey and the Bloomsbury group, in the 'Dreadnought Hoax' (i) and